Text from 2013-14 APSE President Tim Stephens’ inaugural address, delivered June 29, 2013, at the awards banquet of the APSE Summer Conference in Detroit.
It’s an honor to be here tonight to begin my term as APSE President. To lead an organization that has defined my career in many ways is a duty I humbly accept.
Thanks much to Gerry Ahern for the great foundation and example he has set during his term as president;. Likewise, thank you to Michael Anastasi for the opportunity to serve as his 2nd vice president. I look forward to building upon their initiatives in diversity, student recruitment and improving access for our reporters, among their many accomplishments. A big thank you in advance as well to officers Mike Sherman, Mary Byrne, Tommy Deas and the respective region and committee chairs with whom I will serve during the next year. I could not ask for a more capable leadership team as we tackle some big challenges. And of course thanks to all of you who may have voted for me during the election, especially if I woke you up with a 3 am tweet to your cell phone and you STILL voted for me.
It has often been said that journalism is at a crossroads, but I believe that time has past. The road has been chosen, the path is clear even if it is not easy to navigate, and now is the time for action in the new digital landscape. Now, more than ever, is the time for this organization to be the standard bearer for quality sports journalism and the source of leadership, mentorship and inspiration. Whether that leadership is evident in the pages of a newspaper or within the video of a complex multimedia presentation or even within the 140 characters of a reporter’s tweet, APSE must be that beacon of light in a crowded sea of content.
I can speak to this first-hand, for my own career is an example of the influence and difference APSE can make.
I’ll share a bit of my path to this podium tonight because I believe many of you have similar stories. I fell in love with sports journalism while I was still in middle school, poring over the pages of the Birmingham Post-Herald, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and my hometown paper, the Fort Payne Times-Journal in Alabama. I wrote my first paid sports article before I graduated high school – I guess you could say I turned pro early – and in doing so forged a relationship with an ambitious young sports editor just a few months removed from college himself. I did virtually anything to spend time in the newsroom, whether that was typing obituaries or offering a steady hand with an X-acto knife – remember those? – or writing a game story. I covered major college football games before I set foot on a major college campus as a student. The rush of beating a deadline, or designing a page, or shooting and printing just the right photograph became my classroom, and Joey Bunch gave me a gift better than any college education: access to his knowledge, passion for journalism and, most of all, his time. Every day in the newsroom or in the field generally became a conversation about great journalism, defined as we knew it from the words and pages of those APSE-winning nearby metros. I think Joey paid me $25 a story, but honestly, I should have been paying him.
A few years later, I walked unannounced into the newsroom at the Birmingham Post-Herald, a small portfolio in hand, and introduced myself to a sports editor named Don Kausler. What started as a correspondent job turned into the launch of a career. Six years later, I was the sports editor of that newspaper, and just nine years later, I was sitting in a banquet room much like this one, in Dallas, picking up a handful of APSE awards.
I’ll never forget my first APSE convention. I was a bit in awe seeing so many sports editors whose sections I had admired. But I was immediately welcomed by the smile and charisma of Garry Howard, by the praise of Bob Yates, by the knowledge of John Cherwa and so many others, many of whom are in this room today. For a young sports editor full of energy and ideas but with not a lot of experience in leading others, APSE was the guiding force in shaping my leadership style and defining what I wanted my department to be.
My point here is that over the years, whenever I had a problem or a question or needed some guidance or inspiration, APSE was there. It was the example, the resource, the standard for quality. In a crowded landscape of content, with so many competing voices, it is more important than ever that APSE be that standard for the current and future sports editors and now, thanks to the initiative and leadership of reporters such as Kent Babb of the Washington Post, the sports reporters in this country.
It is for this reason, and because APSE has been so important to me, that mentorship will be a primary focus of my term in office. We will target this initiative with an aggressive membership drive, starting with a call tonight for each of our respective region chairs to recruit and sign up at least 10 new members from your region during the next year.
Collaboration with old and new partners will create opportunities and resources to enhance training and education at our region and national conferences. Making our training opportunities more valuable and accessible to members is a vital part of helping them bring the APSE experience into their careers and into their newsrooms.
I will work with Mary Byrne to enrich our website with more and better content that reflects the great creativity and journalistic excellence of our own news sites. And we will continue our efforts on behalf of sports editors everywhere to ensure that access to the newsmakers we cover is not further eroded, so that we can offer our readers the kind of high quality journalism they deserve and expect.
I will call upon sports editors to continue and grow their service to the student sports journalists and young sports editors who turn to us. Just hearing from the students in attendance this week should give you inspiration and pride. They want this guidance. They are turning to you. Be for them what Don Kausler and Joey Bunch and so many of you were to me.
Ten years ago on this very night, in a room much like this one, I was negotiating my salary to join the Orlando Sentinel on a cocktail napkin between trips to the podium. There was no place else I rather would have joined, a newsroom full of four past or future APSE presidents and an unbelievable array of talent. What better place to learn how to run a news organization than alongside Lynn Hoppes, John Cherwa, Steve Doyle and the late, great Van McKenzie. If you want to know what APSE means to me, think about their contributions and the many others such as Bill Speros and Mike Huguenin who helped set a standard of quality.
I have many others I need to thank, from colleagues such as Todd M. Adams — I could not have asked for a better deputy during my time in Orlando — Barry Forbis, Paul Skrbina, Mike Harris, Jeff Rosen, Nick Mathews and Don Shelton. I certainly must thank my current boss, Mark Swanson of CBSSports.com – thanks Mark for being here — and my predecessor at CBS, the late Craig Stanke, a giant we lost far too soon and it is my deepest regret that I did not get to work alongside him. Those who have helped me succeed are far too numerous to name, but I am deeply honored to represent them in all that I do.
Back to my beginnings, and to a young sports writer in a tiny town in northeast Alabama known more for making socks than making headlines. Joey Bunch and I pushed each other hard, daring to dream big. We talked so much about our goals; we called it “chasing greatness,” and if you are someone like John Turner or Chris White in this room tonight, I know this message will sound familiar because I passed that phrase on to anyone I saw who exhibited the same passion for sports journalism that I had. In 2013 Joey Bunch achieved one of his dreams when he won a Pulitzer for his work at the Denver Post. Tonight you all have made my dream come true, too: APSE President, and the opportunity to work with you in pushing this organization forward. I hope we’ll all chase greatness together in the coming year.
Thank you.
